Your M12 Sealed game against Bret was going so well. You had down a bunch of sweet rares, and he’d already blown his Mind Controls on some of your less exciting critters. Your Bountiful Harvest put you way up on life. To seal the deal, last turn, you played Mind Unbound, intent on letting the card advantage carry you to victory.

This made Bret’s top-deck of Jace, Memory Adept and subsequent destruction of the rest of your library all the more painful. Then, to add insult to injury, he Djinn of Wishes into an unblockable Harbor Serpent! The only thing keeping you alive now is the Sundial of the Infinite you threw into your deck for kicks.

You have 27 life, but no cards left in your library. You control a Mind Unbound with no counters, a Rites of Flourishing, a Skinshifter, a Sphinx of Uthuun, a Sundial of the Infinite, a Vengeful Pharaoh, a Drowned Catacomb, a Forest, two Islands, and three Swamps. In your hand is a Fog, a Forest, a Lure, a Naturalize, and a Reclaim. Your graveyard contains four Islands, three Forests, two Swamps, an Amphin Cutthroat, an Arachnus Web, a Bountiful Harvest, a Brindle Boar, a Cancel, a Frost Breath, a Merfolk Looter, a Phantasmal Bear, a Skywinder Drake, a Stampeding Rhino, and an Unsummon.

Bret’s at 6 life, with eighteen cards in his library and no cards in hand. He controls a Crumbling Colossus, a Harbor Serpent, a Jace with 4 loyalty counters, a Phantasmal Dragon, your Alluring Siren enchanted with Mind Control, your Djinn of Wishes with no wish counters enchanted with Mind Control, and nine Islands. In his graveyard is an Ice Cage, a Lord of the Unreal, a Pentavus, two Phantasmal Bears, a Phantasmal Image, and an AEther Adept.

Click here to see the board state for Challenge 1.

Challenge

It’s the beginning of your upkeep. If Bret draws nothing but lands, win the game before you succumb to his Harbor Serpent beatdown or Jace’s ultimate.

Assumptions

Bret will use Jace’s +1 before combat each turn to draw a card and mill your library, trying in vain to find more threats, until he can ultimate and win (unless drawing a card would make him lose). He will attack with the Harbor Serpent as long as it’s safe, but he’ll stop attacking if he knows it will die (if you’re at 5 or less life, of course, he’ll just go for the win). The rest of his creatures will hang back for fear of dying to your Sphinx, unless an alpha strike would win Bret the game.

Send your solutions to nex342+puzzle@gmail.com with the subject line “Puzzle – Sundial M for Mill” and I’ll include the best ones in next week’s article, along with the next puzzle!

Good luck!

Special thanks to Liz Cady for creating the board-state image for this puzzle.

Solutions to Last Week’s Puzzle

I got lots of different solutions to last week’s puzzle. Most of them followed the same basic pattern: They got some cards into the graveyard, used Golgari Grave-Troll to dredge up even more cards, before finally using Narcomoeba and Dread Return to start an infinite combo. Here’s one such solution I particularly like, by mamga:

Play	Mana	Cards in Hand
		7
Dakmor Salvage		6
Cycle Edge of Autumn, dredging Narcomoeba and Golgari Grave-Troll with Dakmor Salvage		5 + 1 known
Cycle Street Wraith, dredging two Narcomoebas, Bridge from Below, two Dread Returns, and Golgari Grave-Troll with Golgari Grave-Troll		4 + 2
Cycle Street Wraith, dredging Gemhide Sliver, Firewake Sliver, Basal Sliver, two Bridge from Below, and Dread Return		3 + 3
Flashback Dread Return returning Gemhide Sliver, sacrificing three Narcomoebas and creating nine Zombie tokens		3 + 3
Flashback Dread Return returning Firewake Sliver, sacrificing three Zombie tokens		3 + 3
Flashback Dread Return returning Basal Sliver, sacrificing three Zombie tokens		3 + 3
Tap Gemhide Sliver and Firewake Sliver		3 + 3
Hivestone		2 + 3
Tap two Zombie tokens and sacrifice one of them		2 + 3
Enduring Renewal		1 + 3
Tap Basal Sliver		1 + 3
Mindlash Sliver		0 + 3
Sacrifice Mindlash Sliver, returning it to hand via Enduring Renewal and creating nine Zombie tokens		0 + 4
Mindlash Sliver		0 + 3
Repeat ad nauseam, creating ten trillion Zombie tokens and attacking

Jennifer Wong managed to do it without needing any additional dredge:

Play	Mana	Cards in Hand
		7
Exile three Simian Spirit Guides		4
Seething Song		3
Island		2
Tunnel Vision targeting yourself, naming Squire and putting two Dread Returns, four Bridge from Below, Crypt Champion, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Flame-Kin Zealot into the graveyard, four Narcomoebas into play, and Squire on top of the library		1
Flashback Dread Return returning Crypt Champion, sacrificing three Narcomoebas and creating twelve Zombie tokens		1
Stack Crypt Champion’s triggers with the sacrifice trigger below the reanimation trigger		1
Crypt Champion’s reanimation trigger resolves, returning Saffi Eriksdotter		1
Sacrifice Saffi Eriksdotter targeting Crypt Champion, creating four Zombie tokens		1
Crypt Champion’s sacrifice trigger resolves, creating four Zombie tokens and returning it to the battlefield due to Saffi		1
Repeat ad nauseam, creating ten trillion Zombie tokens		1
Exile Simian Spirit Guide to pay for Crypt Champion’s trigger		0
Flashback Dread Return returning Flame-Kin Zealot, sacrificing Crypt Champion, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Narcomoeba		0
Attack with ten trillion Zombie tokens		0

Finally, a shout-out goes to Matthieu Degrotte, for being the first person to use Thrumming Stone to solve the puzzle without any graveyard shenanigans beyond Bridge from Below.